Amazing Spider-Man #539
Back in Black: Part 1
Aunt May has been shot by a sniper’s bullet meant for her nephew, Peter Parker, after he publicly revealed that he was Spider-Man. As he cradles May in his arms, the sniper tries to take more shots.[1] Turning to anger, Peter races outside to the parking lot and tosses a jeep at the window across the street where the sniper is shooting from. With no time to lose, Peter then scoops up Aunt May and races to a nearby hospital. Along the way, May tells Peter not to blame himself before she passes out.
At the hospital, the doctors and nurses on duty are suddenly on alert when they hear a large crash coming from one of the rooms. When they go up to check what made the noise, they discover that someone smashed a window in one of the rooms and left an elderly woman with a gunshot wound on one of the beds. As doctors diagnose the gunshot as critical they race to stabilize May and get blood to replace the large amount she has already lost. Listening from outside the window, Peter hears how serious the situation is and tries to hold back his tears.
At that moment, at Ryker’s Island, the Kingpin is reading in his cell when one of the guards comes by to give him some news.[2] He says the primary “gift basket” was not delivered but one of the other two was. The Kingpin is pleased that at least one of the targets was hit. Fisk asks the guard if he knows anything about Euripides, the Greek playwright best known for his tragedies. He recounts how Euripides wrote on of his favorite lines for all time “whom the gods would destroy… They first drive mad.” Explaining that it intensifies the suffering a thousandfold. When the guard doesn’t understand what Fisk means, the Kingpin figures it’s just as well.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane meets with Peter in Times Square and he tells her that May is stabilized but is in critical condition. Peter feels so helpless and blames himself for what happened. Fearing that May might still be a target, he tells Mary Jane to go to County Memorial Hospital and register May under her maiden name, hoping nobody will look too deeply into her history. Peter then leaves, planning on finding who is responsible and really hurt them.
Soon, Peter returns to the scene of the crime where police have already sealed the crime scene. When Peter arrives at the building where the shooter was stationed he quickly webs up the officers guarding the scene. He then searches the room and his spider-sense leads him to a piece of a Gunter-Wass gun scope. Peter is furious that he can’t visit May because of all the publicity around his recent unmasking. All he can do is track down the man who shot May and get his revenge. He goes to a warehouse where illegal weapons are sold and savagely attacks the weapon dealers. When there is only one left standing, Peter demands he tell him everything he knows about the Gunter-Wass sight, breaking his fingers in order to speed things along. He learns that it is a highly specialized scope that only a few dealers sell. When he refuses to tell Peter who these dealers are, Parker threatens more violence to get the gun dealer to talk.
At that same moment, Mary Jane arrives at the hospital and meets with the doctor who performed surgery on May. He takes her to May’s room where Mary Jane learns that May has entered a coma and that she is being kept on life support. The prognosis isn’t good as the doctors don’t think May will pull out of the coma and she will eventually die.
Meanwhile, Peter decides that he needs to wear a costume that adequately reflects the anger he feels. Swinging to the building where he stashed a web-bundle, Peter recovers his black and white costume. He puts it on, vowing to find everyone responsible for shooting Aunt May and kill them.[3]
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May, Kingpin, Jake Martino
Continuity Notes
Peter revealed his identity to the public in Civil War #2, making him a target of the Kingpin who ordered a hit on Peter and his family in Amazing Spider-Man #533. Complicating things is the fact that Peter is now an outlaw after he defected from the Super-Human Registration Act in Amazing Spider-Man #535.
The Kingpin has been incarcerated since Daredevil (vol. 2) #50, the narrative states that this story takes place before Daredevil (vol. 2) #93 when the Kingpin was released from prison.
This is not the alien symbiote commonly worn by Venom, but a cloth costume that was made for Peter by the Black Cat way back in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #99. Peter last wore this costume back in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #19. It’s never explained when Peter stashed his black and white costume. In Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #19, Peter had it stashed in Aunt May’s attic. My guess is that he stashed it after May’s home was trashed by Charlie Weiderman in Amazing Spider-Man #518.
Continuity Errors
Regardless of when and how long Peter stashed his black costume outside in a web-sack is irrelevant when considering how long his webbing lasts. At the time of this story, Peter gained the ability to fire organic webbing after gaining the ability in Spectacular Spider-Man (vol. 2) #20. According to the Spider-Man entry in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #11. the webbing would take a week to dissolve. As such, unless Peter regularly went back to replace the webbing, that costume would have been lost a long time ago. I guess Peter developed a more permanent version of his synthetic webbing that would’t biodegrade?
